Price of XBLA titles on the rise

Chris Charla (XBLA portfolio director) recently told Gameindustry.biz that the price of titles on the Xbox Live Arcade have crept up in recent years.

It’s no surprise, with the popularity of the Indie Game industry on the rise, it was but a matter of time before prices started to creep up. Players are willing to play more for some quality items on the downloadable market, so who can blame them for upping the price slightly? It also appears that the price increase can be related to the critical reception of XBLA games in recent times. According to Metacritic, the rating of XBLA titles have risen by an average of 12 since 2008.

The number of games costing 1200 Microsoft Points has risen from 21 out of 86 to 27 out of 85, from 2009 to 2010. Over 20 games are already confirmed to be costing 1200 points this year.

Chris Charla had this to say:

“Sometimes, when [developers] talk about Live Arcade they’re like, ‘We want to do a boxed quality game on Live Arcade’, and I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’ I can point at a bunch of 38 and 42 and 56 metacritic scoring boxed games, so it actually kind of pisses me off.”I think the games that we’re shipping – a Limbo or a Castle Crashers – are as good as anything on the market.”

There’s no denying the quality of recent titles on the Xbox Live Arcade, but is the rise in price justified? especially for those games that may not be up to scratch? Leave your comments in the box below.